THE 96+ POINTS BY WINE ADVOCATE CROWNS I SODI DI S. NICCOLÒ 2016 AS THE MOST AWARDED ITALIAN RED WINE IN THE WORLD
The top score changes Gentleman magazine’s ranking obtained by adding the scores awarded by the Italian and international guides. The Super Tuscan by Castellare di Castellina now ranks first, followed by Solaia and Sassicaia.
On Friday 12 March, Monica Larner, wine critic for The Wine Advocate, released the ratings for Chianti Classico wines, including super Tuscans, assigning 96+ points to I Sodi di S. Niccolò 2016 by Castellare di Castellina. This score changes the ranking released last February by the Italian magazine Gentleman, obtained by adding the scores awarded to the best 100 Italian red wines by the six most authoritative Italian guides with those of the top international wine critics: Wine Spectator, The Wine Advocate, James Suckling and Antonio Galloni. I Sodi di S.Niccolò, in particular, had not yet been reviewed by The Wine Advocate and now, thanks to this amazing score the Super Tuscan by Castellare di Castellina jumps from sixth position to the first of the ranking with a total score of 960 points, 1.5 more than Solaia by Antinori who gets 958.5 points. While Sassicaia, in second position before, now becomes third with 956 points. In sixth position, we find now Baffonero 2017, the 100% Merlot by Rocca di Frassinello, the other Tuscan winery of the Domini Castellare di Castellina group, born from a joint venture with Domaines Baron de Rothschild-Lafite.
Therefore, the ranking now is the following:
1° – I Sodi di S. Niccolò 2016 with 960 points
2° – Solaia 2017 with 958,5 points
3° – Sassicaia 2017 with 956 points
4° – Tignanello 2017 with 947 points
5° – Guado al Tasso 2017 with 942,5 points
6° – Baffonero 2017 with 941,5 points
7° – Poggio al Tesoro 2016 with 847,5 points
8° – Duemani 2017 with 846 points
“The 2016 harvest was wonderful – says Alessandro Cellai, oenologist of Castellare di Castellina and of the 4 cellars of the DCC group – one of the best of my career so far, because it was characterized by a particularly long season, from spring to autumn, especially for the Sangiovese. And when the season is so long, normally we obtain terrific wines with an excellent polyphenolic maturation. The 2016 vintage adds to the structural characteristics typical of I Sodi di S. Niccolò, a great freshness and longevity: the wine has a great structure, both from olfactory and gustatory point of view, and has a decidedly marked acidity that makes the wine long and persistent, suitable for a very long aging”.